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±m HL2P0RTI 

ISSUE 02 




























Bug Report! is a zine about our experiences as tech 
workers in a deeply broken industry. 

* * * 


As we were putting together this issue, Amazon announced it was canceling 
its plans for HQ2 in NYC. It was a victory for the Scamazon Coalition of 
local residents, community groups, students, unions, and grassroots orga¬ 
nizers who had protested the HQ2 deal for months. They objected to the 
incentives and exemptions that let Amazon get away with not contributing 
any taxes that could fund schools, housing, and transit, while Jeff Bezos is 
the richest person in the world. The company also admitted that it wouldn’t 
remain neutral in response to unionization efforts. 

We were inspired to hear tech workers were part of this struggle too. In 
December, fulfillment center workers called attention to unsafe conditions 
and being “treated like animals” at Amazon warehouses. Many showed up 
to a January city hearing to protest the terms of the HQ2 deal. Over 600 
tech workers signed a petition, “No Work for Amazon New York,” pledging 
not to work for Amazon if they opened HQ2 in Queens. 

Since then, Governor Andrew Cuomo has revealed himself as the bootlick¬ 
er he is. He’s made private calls to Amazon execs suggesting he could by¬ 
pass the opposition and pledging to fast-track state approval for HQ2. He’s 
accused opponents of being “anti-business,” when in fact, what they wanted 
was a deal that didn’t throw New Yorkers under the bus. 

No one likes a bootlicker. Sadly, like roaches, they’re everywhere: they’re 
the politicians, executives, and “thought leaders” who serve the interests of 
money and power. As with other bugs in the system, we’ll do our part to 
report them, but the fix will be up to us all... 

April 2019 


2 


CONTENTS 


Innovate and Break Things. 4 

Queer Dissonance: On Lesbians Who Tech 6 

Robots Against Climate Change 12 

Follow Me on Licked In.17 

The Process.18 

There's No Such Thing As Magic 20 

MadLibs Offer Letter... 21 


3 









Innovate and Break Things: 

A Real Startup Story 

Does this integrate with social media platforms? Most of our leads 
come through Facebook and we’d like to grow our platform on Instagram. 

I stare absently at the email for a good three or four minutes. A few 
random key taps make it look like I’m hard at work. The question wasn’t 
difficult; in fact it came every day. That’s the thing though. Flymanage’s 
website proclaims prominently on the front page that it integrates with just 
about every social media platform. That’s the point of it actually. I think. 

Certainly! I answer with all too much enthusiasm. Flymanage connects 
to Facebook , Twitter ; Instagram , Snapchat , Reddit, Tumblr! If you have any 
other questions I would be more than happy to answer them! 

That was a lie. In fact it was two. The last thing in the world I wanted 
was to answer more obvious questions. On that front, though, I was com¬ 
forted by the fact that at least I was getting paid. 




manage, wtf 

integrate everything 


To be honest, only Facebook integration really works. Most of the time. 
I haven’t actually used it, so I can’t say for sure, but based on the volume 
of customer complaints we receive to the sales email the platform is pretty 
broken. I brought this up with Zhang, the CTO, once. He just told me to 
forward technical issues to him. Bryce, the CEO and other employee, over¬ 
heard and just said “sometimes you’ve got to build fast to build big.” I had 
no clue what he meant. 

I finished up several other sales emails. Mostly the same nature. I then 
shifted gears over to the website. I was supposed to be building a new fea¬ 
ture into the web store. We were going to be releasing a Premium edition. 
Something about more contacts and hits. Twice the monthly price. 


4 


I took a moment to compose myself before opening The File. That 
thing was going to haunt me for the rest of my life, I knew it. I’d taken the 
job right after starting college since they wanted a fresh face they could 
underpay to do the work they didn’t want to do. When Bryce heard I was 
taking an introductory web programming course his eyes glowed. “It’ll be a 
personal pivot!” he proclaimed as he tasked me with maintaining the entire 
e-commerce platform. 

All I really knew about web development was that this file was a mon¬ 
strosity. Your entire back-end code wasn’t supposed to be a single 10,000 
line script with no comments. I think they had hired an overworked and 
underpaid remote Indian contractor to build it. Held together by scotch 
tape would have been a compliment. Somehow I’m supposed to make 
changes to it without breaking everything. About a month in I don’t think 
I’ve made any progress. Yesterday I spent four hours figuring out how an 
order gets sent to the credit card processor using three separate functions 
scattered throughout. 


Your entire back-end code wasn't supposed to be 
a single 10,000 line script with no comments. 


I spend the rest of the day doing much of the same. Create a fake order 
on the website’s development mirror. Add a line in some other random 
place to see if it adds something helpful to the log telling me the order 
things run in. Run. Rinse. Repeat. 

A bit before I’m due to leave, Bryce strolls over to my desk, tucked in 
the back of our section in the coworking space. “Hey, do you have any expe¬ 
rience writing web ads? I’d love to increase your deliverables.” 

I’m silent. It can’t be too hard can it? Maybe it will get me out of this 
for a bit. I nod. Something to work on tomorrow. 

Half an hour later I’m on the bus home. An older woman sits next to 
me and strikes up a conversation, something that never happens in this 
city. She seems friendly though, and its a nice release from being plugged 
into the computer all day. 

Inevitably, she asks what I do for work. I freeze up. To be honest I don’t 
really know. I think about what Bryce would say if I asked for a job descrip¬ 
tion. Channeling him, I can think of only one word. “I innovate.” 


5 




Queer Dissonance: 

Reflections on Lesbians Who Tech 


Carmen (not her real name) came back from the Lesbians Who Tech 2oig 
conference this year with lots of interesting stories . We recorded ourselves 
chatting about it - Spruce Lee . 

The tagline on the Lesbians Who Tech website is “Queer, Inclusive, 
Badass.” Their stated goals are visibility, recruitment of lesbians and 
women into tech, and connecting tech workers to organizations doing 
LGBTQ community work. Let’s start with what it was like the first 
time you attended that conference in 2018. 

I was resistant to going for a long time. They’re very attached to the 
“Lesbians Who Tech” brand but have been trying to be more inclusive. It’s a 
conference for queer women and allies in tech, but I think there’s erasure of 
queer women who are not lesbians in their framing. It’s also pretty expen¬ 
sive. I ended up going because I was able to get work to pay part of the cost. 

This San Francisco conference, their flagship event, is in the Castro. 

It’s not at a conference center. The logistics were terribly organized. Also, 

I believe Lesbians Who Tech is a for-profit corporation [Note: it’s a trade¬ 
mark of Start Somewhere, LLC]. That didn’t really surprise me, knowing 
that the regular ticket price is now $550 and yet it’s not even in real venues. 
Last year, I was not able to get into all the talks because the Castro theater 
doesn’t seat anywhere near all the people who have tickets. They also have 
breakouts in smaller venues which are basically bars around the neighbor¬ 
hood. So it’s also not inclusive to people who are under 21. 

They sell more tickets than they have space to accommodate. It’s got 
this social good branding, but on the other hand, it’s making a living for the 
people who run it. The moment that got me started thinking about this in 
the 2018 conference was when I went to this talk by a military veteran. She 
started out talking about her experiences being deployed and being pinned 
down in the dark and wondering if you’re going to die, if you’re going to 
be hit by a missile strike. And then she transitioned into talking about how 
Patriot missiles are saving us all, and that’s why you should come work at 
Raytheon, where they develop those things. And this is in the main Castro 
theater with the conference slogan on the marquee and I’m thinking, “uh 


6 


okay, I learned about how Patriot missiles are queer, inclusive, and ba¬ 
dass?!” It was just such a cognitive dissonance. 

It was an example of how there’s this very radical framing, but how 
radical can you be when you’re there trying to make your employer look 
good and that’s what your task is? I think of the commodification of iden¬ 
tity and having to package and sell yourself as the “diverse worker” to be 
able to get your job, and the price is you have to turn around and talk about 
how great your employer is. 

Do you think other people who attended that year had a similar reac¬ 
tion? 

I feel like a lot of people accept what it is at face value or look at it as a 
place to socialize. There is really good representation there, because they 
have quotas for their speakers. So there were more Black women there 
than I’ve seen total in any tech spaces otherwise, and a lot of diversity in 
the speaker lineup. 

I felt this big tension realizing that diversity and inclusion in tech is 
its own whole industry. It’s this for-profit company and then there’s all 
these non-profits that are also doing stuff there, where they’re employing 
people and it’s their jobs, and then all the diversity and inclusion HR people 



Patriot missiles made by Raytheon: 
queer, inclusive, badass? 


X 


\tf ** f A. f] 

lifififer'' £ r* v.^BSl 



7 












typically within companies that are doing this. The part I find discouraging 
is, can we really say we don’t want companies doing it? What’s the alterna¬ 
tive? 

Because NOT doing it is definitely worse, right? 

How can we even envision an actual equitable workplace, where it’s 
not just controlled by corporate branding and HR? That first year, they had 
the head of branding for Uber being interviewed on stage. It was a Black 
woman at the time and she said something about how “we look at all of 
our employees as family” and someone in the audience shouted out, “does 
that include drivers?” That was great, but then there was this debate on the 
conference app about whether that was okay because of her identity. And 
that brought up for me how marginalized people are used as shields. Some 
company hires a Black woman to be their brand director because then oth¬ 
er people who are marginalized don’t feel like they can criticize; they don’t 
want to challenge her. So then how do you challenge the company? 

Something I’ve noticed is a shift from the language of diversity to 
equity. I wonder how meaningful that shift is? 

At my workplace it’s still often talked about more as inclusion. Diver¬ 
sity is just who’s there and inclusion is, as they told me at work, being able 
to bring your whole self into the workplace and feel included. That’s an 
interesting way to think about it, because when you bring your whole self 
into the workplace, the workplace can also extend into your whole self. 

But sometimes some aspects of marginalized identity that are not socially 
appropriate can also provide a space that’s separate from work in a positive 
way that naturally resists that assimilation. 

Once you bring that into work, that identity can be packaged up and 
sold back to you. In Seattle, your position in the Pride parade depends on 
how much money you donate. For example, Uber is always in the first 10 
floats because they’re a top level sponsor. They donate a lot of money, but 
does that mean anything about what it’s like for LGBTQ employees at Uber 
or any other kind of equity there? 

The theme of Pride this year is the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. I’m 
thinking about Uber and other companies out there commemorating when 
people threw rocks at cops! It’s been so co-opted and branded that you can 


8 


even talk about Stonewall in a corporate friendly way. It’s shocking. Equity 
is still in that phase where it can be interesting but it’s starting to get talked 
about more by the corporate side of things. They don’t want to let anything 
be driven by workers, right? It’s always, “if you have problems, you should 
go talk to HR.” LGBTQ employees groups are really ways of the company 
trying to take any worker agitation and turn it into something they can 
control. 


Lady capitalism is still capitalism. 


Companies are trying to stop people from doing things like what 
happened at Google 2 or 3 years ago: someone started a spreadsheet where 
people were sharing their salaries and demographic information. The most 
basic form of equity is figuring out if there’s pay equity. And that’s a big 
question people from marginalized groups have, even if you’re not under¬ 
represented. I wonder if my coworkers who are on work visas are getting 
paid as much. They’re way more dependent on having that job than I am. 
Three-quarters of my teammates and my manager and his manager are 
Chinese, so it’s not a lack of representation, but there can still be discrimi¬ 
nation and a lack of power. 

The 6th Annual Summit for Lesbians Who Tech 2019 just took place, 
Feb 28th to Mar 2nd. How did that compare to last year’s? 

I didn’t try to go to as many talks. I was doing other stuff, being there 
more in a work capacity. But there were still so many interesting experienc¬ 
es. One talk was about AI and data ethics. There was a quick mention of “of 
course we need to put people over profits.” You know, of course, but where 
is anyone holding you to that? 

There was a great talk by someone involved in the Google walkout. 
Immediately after them was a manager from Google, talking about running 
good teams. She got up there and started with “oh yeah I supported the 
walkout and I just want you to know it’s not just non-managers; managers 
supported it too.” [Laughs] Like, you couldn’t even talk about something 
that brought up the potential conflict between workers and management 
without trying to calm that down and saying, “oh you know, managers are 
on your side too, we cared about this too.” Lady capitalism is still capitalism. 


9 




My favorite talk was about resisting the use of data as a colonial tool 
of surveillance. The speaker was someone who hadn’t spoken before; 
they were a non-binary Black person and I liked how anti-corporate it 
was. I ended up running into the speaker in the bathroom afterwards. I 
complimented them on how much I liked their talk and I mentioned how 
people at big tech companies have been fighting how their employers are 
using technology for surveillance. Like, this was a gross bar bathroom, it 
was so gross I decided not to use the bathroom and that’s when I started 
talking to them because it was so disgusting and it didn’t have a door—and 
right outside in the hallway, someone interjected, “oh yeah this is a super 
important conversation and I want to put you on the main stage at the New 
York conference.” This was the CEO of Lesbians Who Tech who happened 
to be having her picture taken against the wall outside the bathroom! The 
conference seemed so opposed to this speaker’s message, but that the CEO 
was out there saying I want to give you an even bigger audience, and really 
leaning into that seemed like such a tension to me. I didn’t really know 
what to think of that. 

Gay Shame, which has been around a long time and does what I would 
call radical queer agitation, made a post on Facebook: Lesbians Who 
Tech + Allies is not only sponsored by every horrid corporation, its 
[sp] also openly sponsored by the CIA (yes, the same CIA that has tried 
to overthrow every revolution in the global south) If you are speaking 
or attending this ish, you are co-signing this .... Do you think that’s 
fair? 

Yeah, I’m really glad to see that critique. I’d rather see that than the 
“queers hate techies” stickers. In some ways, we’re gentrifying ourselves 
too, right? As certain subgroups get more opportunity to assimilate into 
the mainstream, like when I talk to gay men in tech in Seattle, they don’t 
exactly feel very marginalized. They have a lot of money. 

What should we be doing to defend our communities? Is it enough to 
be trying to get tech to be more demographically equitable? Does that ac¬ 
tually end exploitation? No. Getting a few more people into the positions of 
wealth and power or into management certainly don’t help, even if they’re 
doing a little bit of advocacy for people like them. They got there, within the 
system as it is, and they profited by it. I do question how much I profit from 
that. 


10 



Let’s go back to the “queers hate techies” thing. Gay Shame definitely 
perpetuates the idea that these are non-overlapping groups. There’s 
no understanding that there’s an awful lot of queer-identified people 
who work in tech. 

There’s something I see when I participate in LGBTQ events in my 
workplace. People who aren’t men usually talk about how they don’t really 
feel like they’re included. And the other people who don’t feel like they’re 
included are Asian men who are immigrants, who don’t fit into gay male 
Western culture. People who are immigrants or working in the U.S. tempo¬ 
rarily may not be out to their families back home or anybody back home, 
and not necessarily out in the workplace either. And it’s just a really isolat¬ 
ing experience. The homonormativity of the club scene in Seattle is really 
not a safe place for these guys. 

I’m not really sure who the queers are who hate techies. I know a lot of 
trans women who work in tech, and that may be because as children, they 
were encouraged more to be in tech, when people thought they were boys. 
Trans folks and trans women have been the most militant and radical in the 

Continued on p.14 


11 






This one goes out to all the techies planning to “save the world” from 
climate change with purely technical, capitalist solutions! Here are some 
ideas of ~*i/.ntapp&d markets*~ to ~ H vterwp-t*~ climate change! 


Mtxy uou 
WyVnmq wifh Iase ^ 



\n\il\ls\Me Species Repellant 

o uses AT t0 invasive species 

. murders invasive species using <* 
Specialized laser 
. traced on googl-e >™ge search result^ 
f or "invaslve bad bois 

o wbae could go wony - ’. 




Scixie iVc ? o\oy Bray'S 
. Detects when o P<f« + °° 

heavy -for a dwindling '«burg 
i Swoops W- up 

Pim iv on a bigger iceburg 
^Fuiure 

polar W« "" TO 
\% large enough 





























p\eas€ tabb 
ini vhoneiy 



Reiimaginilng ^eCLjclilrvo} 

■ Robo^ sorts waste (retycling, trash,and compost) 
»Infrequency classifies pets s< other loved ones as waste 

. shou'd sen as a consumer good; rich people pay good 
money to feel better about -their individual 
environmental impact 


wast« — 

(dtf not p«ts Or 
loved ones'.') 



recycling 

trash 

comport 




Actually, 
that is jast 
divisive, You're 
supposed to 
bribe, not threaten. 
You catch more 

Plies with honey 
-than blackmail, 
you hnow. Let me 
+eil you about how- 

z A 


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**•" * *“ *»> "»« 10 
"'Mnhjuu^? umi| «*) Oct 

Ohd %?V* t kut f °> Wlif, 

^^«vei (future wor|c> 



















workplace because there’s still obvious gaps where employers are not living 
up to what they’re supposed to. For other people, it’s subtle discrimina¬ 
tion or pay inequity. But for trans people, they find there’s only one single 
stall all-gender restroom at work and it’s on the first floor. Or there’s not 
a trans-inclusive health care plan. There’s changes that companies need to 
make that actually cost them money, whereas it doesn’t cost any money to 
say you’re an inclusive workplace. 


In the early 80s, 34% of CS graduates were women 
and a lot of programmers were women. What also 
happened in the 80s was the beginning of the con¬ 
struction of geek masculinity, and there's a direct 
line from there to James Damore. 


I wonder how much diversity and inclusion are being driven by the 
high demand for tech labor. 

As more women enter an industry, the pay goes down on average. So 
I don’t understand why they haven’t been successful getting more wom¬ 
en into tech! They’d have a larger pool of workers. They could pay people 
less! (And they do pay us less. I’ve found out I was getting paid less than 
my male coworkers; I’ve gotten hired at a level lower than I should have.) 
Maybe the answer is that people’s ingrained sexism is too powerful for that 
financial need to overcome. Or maybe it’s that the system of patriarchy is 
overall more beneficial to capitalism. 

There’s tons of ways you’d think inclusion should be profitable, so why 
hasn’t the needle moved? It’s been the same percentage of women in the 
tech industry for quite a while. And then they say, “oh we’re finally going 
to try to get some women into this traditionally masculine industry” as if it 
wasn’t a systematic exclusion. In the early 80s, 34% of CS graduates were 
women [https://tinyurl.com/WomenCSMajors] and a lot of programmers 
were women. What also happened in the 80s was the beginning of the con¬ 
struction of geek masculinity, and there’s a direct line from there to James 
Damore [who wrote the infamous Google anti-diversity memo]. The 80s 
were when this narrative arose about political correctness and diversity as 
some authoritarian feminist plot and these brave rebels who were against 
it. I mean, who’s the villain in Ghostbusters? It’s an EPA official. He’s the 


14 




main antagonist, other than the ghosts, trying to shut down these entre¬ 
preneurs trying to run their business, after there’s the whole scene at the 
beginning where one of them who works at a university is sexually harass¬ 
ing his student. 

The 80s created this fake narrative about feminized authority figures 
shutting down all the fun of these brilliant rebellious male geniuses. And 
you can still see that today in the pushback against diversity. When we give 
this over to HR and company executives, when it comes from them and not 
from the demands of workers, it actually cedes the moral high ground to 
these guys. Because they get to be the rebels against the evil empire that’s 
putting in affirmative action and not meritocracy. 

So how was Lesbians Who Tech in terms of fulfilling your work re¬ 
sponsibilities? 

This year, I went more with the purpose of trying to recruit there. 
That’s always really demoralizing. I don’t want to go back again with that 
as my goal. The disparity between who you meet at these conferences 
focused on marginalized identities and who your boss wants to hire is so 
big. My managers have usually not understood how narrow it is, what 
we’re looking for. And that’s not about someone’s skills so much as it’s this 
prototype of what we think we need. It’s this big gap at the beginning of 
the pipeline. If you don’t take people who aren’t mid-level, you’re cutting 
off people, especially people who started their first job and didn’t like it. 
And that’s an extra reason that women, who are more likely to face sexual 
harassment, leave the industry. Nobody wants you when you’re 1 year out 
of school, right? They want you when you’ve got 5 years of experience but 
what if your boss is terrible and you’ve worked there for 1 year and you’re 
not going to make it 5 years? 

And that’s stuff that can’t come through in resumes and interviews. 
There’s no way to actually tell that story. 

People wonder, why am I not seeing the resumes of more diverse 
candidates? It’s like, are you sure that the hiring bar isn’t just a fence that 
keeps certain people out? It’s not “lowering the bar” if you’re reconsider¬ 
ing whether how you’re ranking people actually relates at all to how well 
they’re going to do their job. 


15 


There’s a survivorship bias, when people talk about women in 
tech. Men in management ask me “what should I be doing to hire more 
women?” I can only speak for me, and I’ve been pretty successful in a 
male-dominated workplace and I’m comfortable there. They really should 
be asking other people who’ve quit! There’s also extra challenges for people 
who are multiply marginalized, people who might be misgendered in the 
interview. 

There’s just a lot of weird stuff about being a woman in tech that I 
don’t even think about much anymore because it’s just the way that it is. I 
used to go to more meetups and tech talks and I would always make a point 
of wearing nerdy t-shirts and not dressing too feminine, because I wanted 
people to know that I was there for the talk, and not, you know, the recep¬ 
tionist! 

That’s awful. 

You know the Zuckerberg thing of like, I’m going to wear a hoodie to 
this important meeting because I’m so important that you just have to deal 
with it? Like dressing down is a status symbol? That also applies to fem¬ 
ininity: it’s a status symbol in the tech world as a woman to be less femi¬ 
nine. The most feminine woman I’ve interacted with at my current job was 
an executive assistant who I saw wearing thigh high stiletto boots at work 
once. I have never seen an engineer dressed like that. 

Are you going to go next year? 

I don’t know. Maybe if I can come up with how I could use that space 
to make something interesting. The evening events are shitty. So putting on 
alternative events outside the main programming, maybe? A social or an 
evening event related to both the topic of the conference and worker power 
in the tech industry? Maybe that’s what I’d rather do next year, just go there 
but don’t even go to the conference. 

You could organize your own counter-conference! 

Yeah, just meet up with coworkers outside and at “counter events” 
that are free and open to everyone. I’d like to see people do that for lots of 
conferences, not just Lesbians Who Tech. 

16 


Follow Me on Lickedln 



Brad Smith 


25 Microsoft 


President and CLO at Microsoft Corporation 


a*. Columbia Law School 


Greater Seattle Area 


See contact info 


Experience 

Weaponizing Technology 

Publicly defended Microsoft's $479 million contract with the U.S. Army. 
Employees working on HoloLens make lethal weapons now. 

Turning a Blind Eye to Separating Children from their Families 

Side-stepped demands from employees to cancel $19.4 million con¬ 
tract providing cloud-computing services to Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement (ICE). 

Cashing in on Human Rights Abuses 

Collaboration on Al and facial recognition with National University of 
Defense Technology in China to aid government surveillance, incarcera¬ 
tion, and "re-education" of Chinese Muslim populations. 

Skills 84 Endorsements 


Licking Boots 1286S 
Counting Money 8876 
Oinking 8875 
War Profiteering • 5001 


Ignoring Staff Demands • 4987 
Being Satya's Yes Man • 4859 
Good Taste in Sweaters • 3 
Humanity 0 


17 




The Process 


by Franz K. 

K. hit “submit”, waited for the acknowledgement, and then did a long 
stretch. It was 1:40 am and she had been working on this for a ridiculously 
long while: the job application website that wouldn’t work until she had 
re-enabled third-party cookies and disabled her adblocker, the jumble of 
third-party recruiting-software web integrations, the times she got booted 
out of the pipe and had to start anew with a new login, the password spec 
requiring a minimum of two special characters (but not “?” or those 
were forbidden), the garbage produced by the automatic parsing of her re¬ 
sume, the following page that had completely forgotten all her information 
and demanded she retype it, the multiple image captchas that assured some 
faraway robot that it wasn’t dealing with another robot, and finally the 404 
that made her lose all her progress and have to start up again in a different 
browser... but finally all that was past now. 

Her resume was in and she had an email confirmation to prove it! 

As she cracked her knuckles over her head, basking in a bit of tiny tempo¬ 
rary accomplishment, she reflected on the past four months - the count¬ 
less times she had submitted her resume, the black hole her applications 
seemed to always fall into, the recruiters who were raving fans one day 
and forever forgot her thereafter, the form-letter rejection responses - but 
finally this time she had landed it - a job description that so closely matched 
her background and skills that it seemed to have been written just for her - 
a perfect match! 

And before she had even finished cracking her knuckles, another email 
appeared in her inbox. She read it without taking a breath: for the position 
she had just applied to five minutes ago! And it was a ... rejection. 

How, so quickly, in the middle of the night? It made no sense. And it stung 
more than usual, even after all these months of getting inured to rejection. 
She had been so sure this was a good fit, and yet she apparently couldn’t 
even get through the very first screening level. 


18 


“It’s quite easy to explain,” said Disruptor. K. wheeled around, not expecting 
another person in her room, but recognized Disruptor immediately, despite 
never having seen him before. Disruptor was the ruthless supernatural 
lord of the tech job world. Despite his terrific power, he enjoyed doling out 
(mostly unsolicited) advice to all those he came across. 

“You are wondering why your application wasn’t successful, mortal,” he 
said. “The job application process is supremely efficient. Indeed, so efficient 
that one can scarcely imagine it. Through a series of tubes, every applica¬ 
tion is carried along to the very best opening for it. Likewise, every opening 
travels to find the very best applicant, all managed by the great Invisible 
Hand Of Tech.” 

“But my application...” began K. Disruptor loudly interjected: “Let us not 
worry about your insignificant application! The point is that the system 
is supremely efficient. Who are you to question this vast, sophisticated, 
perfect machine?” 

“But I’m a perfect fit for this job description - shouldn’t I at least get an 
interview?” 

“The System has ruled, and it knows best,” said Disruptor. He began to 
vanish, parting with the final words: “Get a job, hippie!” 


19 


There's No Such Thing as Magic 


Every place I’ve worked, some ridiculous manager takes visitors 
around to the tech teams, gestures grandly at the cubicles and 
whiteboards, and declares, 

"... and tlais is w here the magic laappens!” 



Um, no. 

Features aren’t built by waving a wand. Bugs aren’t fixed by 
casting a spell. Machines aren’t deployed at the snap of a finger. 
All of these things are the result of people expending time and 
energy to do careful, meticulous work. 

“Magic” sounds like a compliment, but what they’re really saying 
is, “I don’t have to care about what actually goes into making 
projects happen. I can just expect the impossible.” Meanwhile, 
we’re the ones stuck working crazy hours. 


Next time someone calls what you do magic, smile and say: 

“Only little kids believe in magic. 
Here, it’s just hard work.” 


20 


MAP-UBS 


0. Person in the room:_ 

1. /Adjective:_ 

2. Noun:_ 

Now go to namelix.com & enter that noun:_ 

3. White man over 35:_ 

4. Verb (ending in -s):_ 

5. Noun:_ 

6. Number:_ 

7. Verb:_ 

8. Plural noun:_ 

9. Someone paid more than you:_ 

10. Transitive verb:_ 

11. Number:_ 

12. Plural noun:_ 

13. Food item:_ 

14. Substance associated with toxic masculinity: 

15. Verb (ending in -ing):_ 

16. Number:_ 

17. Friendly gesture:_ 

(18. Noun from #12):_ 

(19. Namelix'd noun from #2):_ 


21 























M AD - LIBS: offer letter 


Dear 


PERSON IN ROOM 


We are to offer you a full time Engineering job at 

ADJECTIVE NOUN, ENTERED INTO NAMELIX.COM 

(the "Company"). You will report to_. You will contribute to 

WHITE MAN OVER 35 

our mission to change how' the world . while making our 

VERB ENDING IN -S 

founders and VCs rich as 


lives of 


NUMBER 


people. 


NOUN 


. You will have a lasting impact on the 


By signing this letter, you agree to the following: 

• We own everything you do, even when you_ 

• Everything is under NDA, especially regarding _ 

• Forced arbitration. 

• If you are sexually harrassed by _ 


VERB 


PLURAL NOUN 


or any 


SOMEONE PAID MORE THAN YOU 

employee, we might fire them, or we might_them instead. 

TRANSITIVE VERB 


other 


Compensation and employee benefits: 

• Your salary will be 4x that of our highest paid contractor 

• A signing bonus of _ 


NUMBER 
1 Unlimited_and 


PLURAL NOUN 


FOOD ITEM SUBSTANCE ASSOCIATED WITH TOXIC MASCULINITY 

• Mothers rooms, nap rooms, crying rooms, __rooms 

• At least one bathroom per 


VERB ENDING IN -ING 

employees 


FRIENDLY GESTURE 


NUMBER 

from HR in lieu of parental leave 


If you're a man, feel free to call and ask for more 
Everyone else, just sign below. 


NOUN FROM SIGNING BONUS 


We're excited to adjust you to our culture, 


COMPANY NAME FROM ABOVE 


22 























Tech Workers Coalition @techworkersco • Mar 21 

SjJ SjS SjSJjS SjJ S s s JjJJjJ Sjs SjSljS SjS 
They will say our day is over, they will say our time is through 
They will say you need no union if your collar isn't blue 
But that's just another pack of lies the boss is telling you 
For the union makes us strong! 

SjS SjJ SjJSjJ SjJ SjJ SjJSjJ SjJ SjJSjS SjJ 

Q 3 11 135 490 



Game Workers Unite ••• @GameWorkers • Mar 18 v 

We're very excited to announce the launch of our new zine, just in time for GDC! 
Read it online, or print out and share with your friends and coworkers: 
zines.gwumtl.com #GDC19 #GWUatGDC [1/8] 



Game Workers Unite Zine - GDC 2019 

Read the latest zine from Game Workers Unite! 

zines.gwumtl.com 


Q 1 XU 89 C? 170 


Workers For Workers @workers4workers • Mar 20 v 

New post #ContractWorkerStories out on #workersforworkers today! Read about 
Camila and their struggle with being overworked and underpaid at @facebook: 

Camila: Overworked And Underpaid 

This story comes from Camila, a contingent worker at 
Facebook. Their name and a few details have been 
changed to protect their privacy. Hi! I’m Camila; I joine... 

workersforworkers.org 

Q 2 11 12 Q? 26 



23 


'//Tru. n l \ 




Next Issue: On Call... to ACTION! 


We wanted to write a piece for this issue about how much we hate being 
on call, but we were overwhelmed with anxiety from, uh, being on call. 
However, there’s so much to say on this topic that we’re dedicating the next 
issue to it! 

Submit your stories about being on call: 

• What can’t you do when you are on call? 

• What would other industries look like if their workers were required to 
be on call? 

• How has being on call disrupted your personal life? 

• How has your workplace normalized on call culture? 

• How do people push back against invasive on call culture? 

Other content about the invasive 24/7 aspects of tech work would fit too. 

Stories are ideally -1000 words. Creative features and artwork are wel¬ 
come. 

Deadline: August 1st, 2019 


WRITE US! 

bugreportzine@protonmail.com 
Stalk us on Instagram: 

@bugreportzine 
Check out our fancy website: 

https://bugreportzine.noblogs.org